


yet at her birth, a star

by tansypool



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
Genre: Angst, Childbirth, Gen, and reflections on the hours before, look it's technically marisa/asriel but he's not in it, the first few hours after lyra's birth mostly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-18
Updated: 2020-04-18
Packaged: 2021-03-01 16:55:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23720440
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tansypool/pseuds/tansypool
Summary: Marisa sends the child away, and is left in silence, nothing but her monkey and her thoughts and her pain for company.
Relationships: Lord Asriel/Marisa Coulter
Comments: 16
Kudos: 47





	yet at her birth, a star

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you Lilly Marie for making sure this was coherent, given the hour it was written at and the wine that was drunk before it.

She sends the child away, and is left in silence.

She doesn’t quite know where the midwife came from - someone found by Asriel, no doubt, sent from Oxford, as though she’d merely met the woman by chance on an academic trip, as though she’d ever met her at all. She had appeared, alone, as though expected, as though the timing of this was something that could have been predicted.

It seemed like a silly precaution, nothing that would ever need to be worried about. But all she can see in the child is Asriel, and she knows that there will be no convincing anybody of anything else - not least of all Edward, who would see nothing of himself in the child, and nothing of her.

And so the child goes with the midwife, the servants scattered hours ago in a hoarse demand for privacy that she doesn’t remember uttering.

All she can do is lay alone, in the silence, nothing but her monkey and her thoughts and her pain for company.

She feels as though she’s been lying in her bed for hours, though she supposes that she has. Towels laid down by the solitary midwife who never gave her name, sheets stripped away after endless hours and endless blood and endless pain like she has never felt, the pain the only thing lingering.

She takes nothing for the pain - nothing was left behind, nothing was offered at all. It almost feels like an atonement for her sins. She’d find something, but she doesn’t want to move, when it still aches to do so, when it aches to do nothing at all.

It still feels as though her body isn’t her own - months of every priority of everyone around her being the life-that-will-be, and not her life that is already hers. Months of cloying hands against her stomach, as though she had been rendered public property by her pregnancy, with endless assurances and honeyed words to Edward, and nothing but the assumption of a pending joy towards her. And that night, hours of a stranger’s hands against her, and yet, that stranger was the only one treating it all as a normal, expected thing, rather than some wretched miracle.

But she can’t help but notice that the woman doesn't call her _Mrs Coulter._ Not once. Always _Marisa,_ the few times she said anything at all, and it makes her acutely aware that this woman’s presence was Asriel’s doing, and she can’t push the thought of him away, not until the next surge of pain runs through her. 

Again, the lingering, ever-present pain, in the endless night, her monkey as silent as she is, waiting for the dawn.

Images relentless in her mind, of the mere hour after the final horrors of the birth, before the woman and the child vanished into the witching hour.

A child, far too much of Asriel in every feature, tiny and bloody and squalling in a towel, passed into her arms with an order masquerading as a suggestion to feed her, because there was a nurse waiting in Oxford, but the child cannot wait that long. A child, calm and content and suckling at her breast, as Marisa fights the urge to be sick.

She’d always been horrified by children, even as a child herself. And her mother had said, every time, _It is different when they’re your own_. A pointless platitude, another lie from her mother’s mouth.

She looks at the child that she knows is hers, and she feels nothing. She can’t bear to look any longer, but there is movement, still, as the tiny dæmon flickers into a mimic of her monkey, and she feels her own monkey recoil at the sight. A tiny little thing, with hair a bright white-gold, with no sense of what it is to be a dæmon, clinging to the child and then clinging to her arm, as though they were all one, not permanently separated, a long-awaited mercy.

A rush of nausea and she is staring at her ceiling again, alone but for her monkey, the room still dark.

Her throat still hoarse, from the screaming, from the whispers, playing unbidden in her mind, memories she wants to push away, but there is nothing left for her to push them away with.

She says the name on impulse, moments before she had been left alone - a sudden, crashing image, of staring at the stars, lying by Asriel’s side. And another name, the only word her monkey has said, and she knows that a memory rushed through him as it did her. The names are mere murmurs as the midwife takes the child and the dæmon into her arms, to hide them away.

And thus, Lyra and Pantalaimon are carried away, into the night, and as Marisa is left alone and in silence, all she can feel is relief.

The relief courses through her again, at their absence, at her solitude, and with that, she barely slips away into something masquerading as rest. At some point, the images blur into dreams, and she can’t quite tell the difference, and the hours vanish until the sound of footsteps, of servants moving in near-silence, not silent enough.

Edward arrives with the sun - a servant sent a telegram, many hours ago, long before there was anything to say, she's sure of it. She's surprised he didn't arrive sooner, but for that, she's glad. He’d been somewhere in Gloucestershire, far enough away to arrive too late to know a thing.

She doesn't want to face him, doesn't want to face being awake, returned to a dull ache coursing through her body.

She only opens her eyes at the touch of his hand - far too gentle, barely a touch at all, and the skin far too soft. He’s stripped off his travel garments, likely left them on the floor, and is watching her, the closest to tears she has ever seen him.

She remembers another hand, gentle against her face, with calluses and scars - the farthest thing from the hands of a politician. It’s all she can think of, but she does not let it show, cannot let it show.

He doesn't say anything, not to start. Just his hand, too soft against her cheek, But then the gentle words, a mere whisper. "Marisa, I'm so sorry."

And silence, again, because there's nothing she can say, nothing _to_ say, but he seems to expect it, because all he does is lay next to her, his arm across her, his thumb brushing so gently against her shoulder in some delusion of comfort that it almost tickles.

He holds her close, and she lets him, nothing left in her to fight against an almost condescending motion, as he pulls her to his chest. His heartbeat is deafening, but if she closes her eyes, she can almost imagine that the heartbeat is not his. Almost.

She hadn’t realised that she was cold until she feels the blankets pulled around her, the hours of being in naught but a night-dress leaving her chilled to her core. He’d barely moved her at all as he did so, all too careful, all too caring.

An arm around her shoulders, a kiss to her temple, a gentle hand against her arm.

She’d almost loved him, once. As she lays in his arms, she cannot remember how she ever could have even reached that _almost._

She lays there, silent, as though she’s already asleep, as though she cannot hear his stifled sobs, the only sound in the dawn. She can't stand to watch him mourn his child, a child who is not dead and who is not his to mourn.

But try as she might, she does not sleep.


End file.
